fickenchucker:My understanding is I'm grateful the Russians consider life to be disposable. If they didn't sacrifice so much to annoy the Nazis, the result of WWII could have been very different.

Problem is Communism breeds that type of indifference about human life, so we'd better make sure China thinks it something to lose in the long run. If not, they have a billion more meatbags than we do.

Russia was treating its peasant population like a disposable resource long before Communism.

My understanding is I'm grateful the Russians consider life to be disposable. If they didn't sacrifice so much to annoy the Nazis, the result of WWII could have been very different.

Problem is Communism breeds that type of indifference about human life, so we'd better make sure China thinks it something to lose in the long run. If not, they have a billion more meatbags than we do.

The Germans nearly took Leningrad on the first rush. The defense of the city was in the hands of the redoubtable Klem Voroshilov. Back in Moscow they couldn't figure out whether Voroshilov had done a deal with the Nazi's to hand over the city or he simply sucked at, you know, military stuff. Zhukov was dispatched to straighten things out and Voroshilov was sent back to Moscow, in disgrace. If Voroshilov hadn't been Stalin's buddy/pal from the civil war, he would been shot. Stalin was, at least, true to his cavalry pals, I mean he kept that dope Budenny around, he just didn't let him do anything important.

The Russians are justifiably proud of their endurance through out the Siege of Leningrad. It was, after all, the former capital of Russia under the name of Saint Petersberg, a city built on the bodies of thousands of men in a swamp (like Washington), and one of the great artistic and architectural glories of the world.

Also, the Nazis were notoriously sticky-fingered and since the disappearance of the Amber Room, nobody would want any of their treasures carted off to Berlin. You'll never see half of them again. We're talking the Hermitage Museum and stuff. That's a lot of great masters to lose!

In any case, it would have been embarrassing to surrender Leningrad only to have Jews remind you of the Siege of the Warsaw Ghetto in perpetuity. We're talking a race that lost Jerusalem at least twice and that hadn't been allowed to join the military in most Christian nations for about 1800 years. They'd sooner have surrendered Jerusalem and the Middle East to the Muslims.

Leningrad was as close to a warm water port as they had or may ever have. If they ever eliminate the Turk and the Arab, they'll build one regardless of what engineering or geographical obstacles stand in their way. That is what St. Petersburg means: Russia wants the World.

It was a terrible, terrible battle with the Germans being extra vicious because they regarded the Slavs as sub-human, Jew-ridden, and a credible military threat. Furthermore, it was, if I recall correctly, the Germans who broke the secret treaty. Nothing makes humans angrier than being in the wrong. They will never forgive you for letting them betray you. That is the sin for which there is no remission.

In short, I would go with the Russian patriots on this one. Leningrad surrendered? Unthinkable.

And I am only kidding about Washington at Valley Forge. The colonials were in a bad way, without shoes or boots and with only rags to cover their bare asses. They were underarmed (because at the time of the Revolution only about 1% of American men owned firearms--they had to be hand-made, every single part being crafted separately and thus few of them being interchangeable--that was a great renovation of Mssrs. Smith, Weston, Remington, etc.--the standardization of munitions manufacturing made it possible to grab a gun and replace a missing part even on the battlefield in some cases, as well as to manufacture them on an industrial scale). All in all, Washington took a calculated risk and succeeded against a stronger foe. Nothing succeeds like success, as they say.

In a similar way, the sacrifices of Russians during the Siege of Leningrad were a long shot but they won the war even though it cost them 25,000,000 or more casualties. In fact, even some American and British historians are prepared to entertain the idea that the Russians were instrumental in preventing the Germans from winning World War II because they allowed time for the Americans to enter the war. Hitler showed willingness to make a separate peace with the UK, which would have left Europe in his hands and possibly permitted success on the Western Front. The US would have lost its chance to fight the Nazis and the Germans over there, rather than over here.

As a matter of fact, the Nazis were already over here, at least in a small way. There is evidence that they came ashore in the Canadian North which was almost completely indefensible against a submarine popping up in the night. The Japanese did attack US territory (Hawaii) and could have attacked the West Coast if the US navy hadn't ramped up to do the job. In between wars the US navy had sunken to new lows. Just how low is partially proven by Pearl Harbor. But that was probably as much diplomatic and intelligence failure as military weakness.

Nobody likes to contemplate the union of Eurasia under any power, French, Russian, Nazi or Commie, so peace would have been a tragedy in 1941 or 1942. And the Japanese were prepared not to quit until the second atom bomb dropped. That proved that the US would not stop making them or using them as long as they were in the war to win.

That's why we must always be at war with Eurasia, even in "peace time". The en jeu is bigger than mere empires. It is the world as long as anybody believes that one world, one empire is possible.